It doesn't quite work like that. Luton Airport is regarded as a National Rail station having the code LUA. You can through ticket from any other station on the network. Who gets what proportion of the fare is determined by the Rail Settlement Plan and is calculated taking into account the number of operators over the entire route. For instance a single ticket from St Pancras to Luton Airport would be shared by Thameslink and East Midlands Railway with the shuttle bus share going to Thameslink. Should the airport strike a deal over the DART then that proportion would go to them through the RSP. If the airport want to be the exclusive vendors of tickets for the DART then through ticketing on the national network would not be possible. Thameslink do not issue tickets on their exclusive behalf unless they introduce an advance ticket or a ticket only valid on their services (such as those sold onboard incoming flights) so could not charge the airport a fee for doing so on a through ticket. Saying that, a commission could be received on stand alone DART tickets sold by them, if the airport allowed their sale.

Above...And right on trend:another LTN muddle.

As I have stated before the Dart will do much to enhance the airport experience for the 1.5m rail passengers who will be buying return tickets to use it but the Dart will do nothing to increase the airports capacity, which is presently fixed at 18m. If the DCO is turned down then the Council has blown £243m in loans with no guarantee that it will turn a profit on the Dart as LLAL becomes a transport operator.

On the positive side travel between St Pancras and the Airport should come in at around 30 minutes or under using East Midland Trains which is far quicker than the Stansted Express.

On the negative side the enhanced new electric service will be using second hand 20 year old ex Southend stock that has been tarted up. Walking through the train will not be possible as 2 joined up trains will be used.
https://www.railmagazine.com/news/ne...cation-delayed

Fairly negative take on it ... potential passengers will have a choice between a dedicated, faster (but more expensive) St Pancras-LUA express service and a very high-frequency, high-capacity Thameslink service from a number of useful central stations. Both of these are a vast improvement on what Luton could offer as little as four years ago, and both are more attractive than the Stansted or Gatwick Express. (I find Thameslink excellent for London-Gatwick and suspect users will prefer it for Luton, too).

Contactless ticketing (Oyster PAYG or mobile payments) would be the cherry on the cake.

Actually there will now be no price difference between the walk on fare for East Midland trains and Thameslink. Not sure if that will apply to discount tickets but I expect it will. There was an intention to charge a supplement but that has now been dropped.

Certainly Luton has a superb list of directly connected stations extending from the south coast to the midlands.

Just picky but EMT ceased to exist a couple of years back it's East Midlands Railway now.

The electrification of EMR keeps drifting further and further to the right. A friend of mine who works in the business reckons it will be early summer at least before these train sets are in operation.

The operating company were still saying May 2 months ago in the article below. Of course it was meant to start in December 2020.


The airport was pushing for 4 non stop trains an hour so depending which way you look at it the service will either double or the service will be half what was requested. At one point they were hoping for express branding on the trains. Combined services will see 16 trains an hour call in at Parkway. 2 non stop, 4 semi fast, 2 slow in each direction.

The actual trains are more modern on the Thamelink service and more commuter looking on the East Midland Railways service and a step backward compared to the existing diesel trains.
https://www.eastmidlandsrailway.co.u...-key-milestone

The Thameslink trains never seemed that luggage friendly to me. Any signs of change?

Looking at the Sun Express website, they seem to be offering a full programme in S21 to Ankara and Gazantiep (weekly), Antalya (up to 5x weekly) and Izmir (up to 4x weekly). A longer season in 2021, with flights starting on 3rd April.

I'm curious - who are the passengers who fly between Luton and Gaziantep ? Are there really that many Turks living in London/Gaziantep who want to fly back/forth, or is it simply a side route into Syria as flights cannot operate between the UK and Damascus/Aleppo for the time being ? I find it difficult to believe there's much tourist traffic on the Luton-Gaziantep route....

How can there be any tourist traffic as it is illegal?

How do you know already it'll be illegal for tourist traffic between Turkey and Luton in Summer 2021?

It's a decent-sized city (2 million population), and only 60 miles from Aleppo (2010 population 4.6 million). But no beaches, and close to what has been a war zone.

Gaziantep...

Back in the day when originally introduced at STN was led to believe it was Turkish pax visiting family/relatives.

PinOnTheRight

I never mentioned summer did I

So what is your point apart from a desire to post pointless drivel?

No, but the original post you were commenting upon did.

LTNman

As SWBKCB points out, the discussion on schedules to Turkey relates to Summer 2021.

But my real reason for posting is because I’m playing catch up to try and rival your record of 8000+ posts of pointless drivel over the years.

LTNman posts on another pprune forum too..."Aviation History & Nostalgia" with very worthy historical info & photographs from his knowledge of all things LTN which adds greatly to the total of 8000+ posts I suspect...

It will be interesting to see what valuable comment & input has been produced eventually by PinOnTheRight then by chasing posts...Good luck with that.